Papers by Sergio Sparviero
Global Media and Internet Concentration Project, 2024
This report examines market concentration trends in Austria’s network media economy, covering the... more This report examines market concentration trends in Austria’s network media economy, covering the period from 2019 to 2022. It looks at three major sectors: telecom and internet access, online and traditional media services, and core internet applications. The report contextualizes Austria’s media landscape by discussing its infrastructure, policy framework, and competitive environment. While revenue data is primarily used to measure market concentration, other metrics, such as website visitors and access data, are employed in cases where revenue figures are unavailable, particularly for online news media, social media, and operating systems. Due to the lack of data, concentration indices for industries like music and gaming are not provided.
De Gruyter Handbook of Social Entrepreneurship, 2024
The need for informed and well-structured business models underpinning social ventures designed t... more The need for informed and well-structured business models underpinning social ventures designed to address the societal challenges of our times is great. This chapter begins by defining sustainability and highlighting its growing significance. Sustainability is recognized as a shared objective among diverse organizations striving to create a positive societal impact. Continuing, a focus on the concept of a business model and its recent developments is reviewed and asserts that social ventures and commercial enterprises have mutually influenced the development of each other’s business models. Additionally, the evolution, research, and development of business model theory through to practice, the components that underpin them, and their observed typologies and archetypes will be discussed in the context of social ventures. This chapter identifies social ventures (or equally, social enterprises) as organizations that prioritize social over economic goals while drawing a critical share of their income from engaging in markets. The conclusion offers illustrative examples of business model categorizations and archetypes specifically within the realm of social ventures.
Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, Jan 31, 2019
The main purpose of this article is to introduce the Social Enterprise Model Canvas (SEMC), a Bus... more The main purpose of this article is to introduce the Social Enterprise Model Canvas (SEMC), a Business Model Canvas (BMC) conceived for designing the organizational settings of social enterprises, [COMA] for resolving the mission measurement paradox, [COMA] and for meeting the strategy, legitimacy and governance challenges. The SEMC and the analysis that explains its features are of interest to academics concerned with the study of social entrepreneurship because they offer a new analytical tool that is particularly useful for untangling and comparing different forms of social enterprises. Also, it is of interest to social entrepreneurs, because the SEMC is a platform that can be used to prevent 'mission drifts' that might result from problems emerging from the mismanagement of such challenges. The arguments presented are grounded on scientific literature from multiple disciplines and fields, on a critical review of the BMC, and on a case study. The main features of SEMC that makes it an alternative to the BMC are attention to social value and building blocks that take into consideration non-targeted stakeholders, principles of governance, the involvement of customers and targeted beneficiaries, mission values, short-term objectives, impact and output measures.
Media Industries Journal, 2015
Academic, trade, and popular publications commonly assert that 80 percent of motion pictures fail... more Academic, trade, and popular publications commonly assert that 80 percent of motion pictures fail to make a net profit, suggesting also that the main players of the motion picture industry operate in highly volatile market conditions. More importantly, major film companies use this argument to negotiate for better terms with their production and distribution partners, to lobby for stricter copyright protections, and to argue in favor of media conglomeration as a hedge against adverse market conditions. This article disputes these assertions by calculating the full range of income that major motion pictures derive from their primary and secondary markets. It demonstrates that a large share of studio films are ultimately profitable, therefore challenging the arguments that conglomerates make with industry partners and government policy makers. 2
The Routledge Handbook of Digital Media and Globalization, 2021
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2010
Communication & Society, 2019
Analyses of business models and media consumption within the traditions of media economics and me... more Analyses of business models and media consumption within the traditions of media economics and media management explicitlybut mostly implicitly-rely on the representation of a media consumer that rationally pursues the maximisation of utility. Such concept provides the basis for the generalised understanding of the passive consumer of media goods, motivated by subjective wants, needs and preferences. Yet, the digitalisation of media production and distribution has fundamentally changed consumers, producers and their relationship. Users of digital media platforms select, purchase or attend the output of media providers, and leave traces of their digital activities for marketers and advertisers. In addition, they supply content, rate, comment, and share or promote among their network the offers of media providers. The increasing variety of media providers are better understood as brands proposing different value generating activities rather than substitute products at different prices. Critically and by drawing from literature from a variety of research traditions, including political economy of communication, sociology, philosophy and marketing, this theoretical paper discusses the features of the active user of media brands, the hypothetical recipient of the business models of digital media services such as YouTube, Google, Netflix, Amazon Video or Facebook. It is argued that practical knowledge, affect, different types of gratifications and universal values, which are guiding principles for a better life, should be taken into account.
POL: Other Industry Specific Strategy & Policy (Topic), 2013
As many authors suggest, nowadays the distribution arms of the major info-entertainment conglomer... more As many authors suggest, nowadays the distribution arms of the major info-entertainment conglomerates heavily invest in feature films that promote their own intellectual properties. As a result, the variety of features films that these companies contribute to produce increasignly depends on the revenues that the embedded intellectual properties can generate on secondary and ancillary markets, while the theatrical release is frequently an expensive loss leader mainly designed to create awareness of these properties. Using publicly available data from various internet databases, the present paper provides a contribution to the understanding of this trend by analyzing the portfolio of feature films released in 2007 and distributed by the mainstream and minor divisions of the six largest ‘Majors’. Specifically, the purpose of this analysis is to assess the use of three cardinal principals of this business strategy valorising intellectual properties: (1) ‘Strike while the iron is hot’, (...
In this paper, we experiment and adopt ‘new’ economic approaches to interrogate some of the funda... more In this paper, we experiment and adopt ‘new’ economic approaches to interrogate some of the fundamental changes and continuities in the music industry ‘system’ that have been produced as a result of digitalisation. In this experiment, we also include established techniques of media industries’ analysis like a value-chain analysis (e.g. Kung, Picard and Towse 2008) and the distinction between audience and users markets, following the seminal work by Picard (1989). However, not only we consider the music industry as composed by three segments: (1) the digitalisation of content production in the music industry stage; (2) the distribution and marketing stage; (3) the delivery and exhibition stage, but we also attempt to provide a map of the increasing variety of activities in each segment. Moreover, we embrace a service activity perspective and pay particular attention to changing relationships between these activities. Our account of the main changes to the music industry relies on evi...
Media, Culture & Society, 2021
This article suggests that the adoption of hybrid business models coupled with the establishment ... more This article suggests that the adoption of hybrid business models coupled with the establishment of an ethical advertising platform could help counter the emergence of news deserts. The latter are geographic areas and policy issues lacking coverage because of the crisis of the commercial model of news provision. Three clusters of characteristics are used to streamline and compare business models: (1) revenue models, (2) patrons and their motives, and (3) legal frameworks for the incorporation of the organization. Hybrid business models are designed by mixing the principles underpinning the Benefit Corporation or the Low-profit Limited Liability Company (L3C), with the basic characteristics of commercial and non-profit news organizations. The term ethical advertising refers to promotional activities that non-profits and other organizations dedicated to social goals normally undertake, including marketing, fundraising, or public-awareness campaigns. Based on data published by the Inte...
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 2020
This article proposes comparing nonprofit news organizations that prioritize social welfare goals... more This article proposes comparing nonprofit news organizations that prioritize social welfare goals with the hybrid organizational form that mixes the institutional logics of charities and business enterprises: the Social Enterprise. The institutional logic comprises organizing templates, patterns of actions and values. These Social News Enterprises (SNEs) are analyzed as hybrids mixing the institutional logics of commercial, public, and alternative news media. Financed by donations and the revenue from services, SNEs engage in public, investigative, and explanatory journalism. Normative behavioral principles of SNEs are used to compare the impact-based model of ProPublica with the growth-focused model of The Texas Tribune.
Global Media Convergence and Cultural Transformation, 2011
Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 2019
The main purpose of this article is to introduce the Social Enterprise Model Canvas (SEMC), a Bus... more The main purpose of this article is to introduce the Social Enterprise Model Canvas (SEMC), a Business Model Canvas (BMC) conceived for designing the organizational settings of social enterprises, [COMA] for resolving the mission measurement paradox, [COMA] and for meeting the strategy, legitimacy and governance challenges. The SEMC and the analysis that explains its features are of interest to academics concerned with the study of social entrepreneurship because they offer a new analytical tool that is particularly useful for untangling and comparing different forms of social enterprises. Also, it is of interest to social entrepreneurs, because the SEMC is a platform that can be used to prevent 'mission drifts' that might result from problems emerging from the mismanagement of such challenges. The arguments presented are grounded on scientific literature from multiple disciplines and fields, on a critical review of the BMC, and on a case study. The main features of SEMC that makes it an alternative to the BMC are attention to social value and building blocks that take into consideration non-targeted stakeholders, principles of governance, the involvement of customers and targeted beneficiaries, mission values, short-term objectives, impact and output measures.
International Perspectives on Business Innovation and Disruption in the Creative Industries
ABSTRACT
The Service Industries Journal, 2010
This paper proposes a more positive and useful reading of cost disease. A case is presented for r... more This paper proposes a more positive and useful reading of cost disease. A case is presented for refocussing general attention from the characteristics of cost disease (ie widening production cost and price gap between the product of progressive and stagnant industries) to its ...
Journal of Media Economics, 2009
This article explains that the most important aspect of WJ Baumol's idea of cost disease is ... more This article explains that the most important aspect of WJ Baumol's idea of cost disease is the fundamental intuition that there are some types of labor's contributions that are irreplaceable by new technologies. These contributions are indentified as creative inputs: original ...
Media Convergence and Deconvergence, 2017
Media ConvergenCe as a ConCept It is now more than thirty years since Ithiel de Sola Pool keenly ... more Media ConvergenCe as a ConCept It is now more than thirty years since Ithiel de Sola Pool keenly observed a "convergence of modes" (Pool, 1983, p. 23), by which he referred to the increased connectivity between media and the erosion of formerly fixed boundaries. Ever since then, especially with the emergence and wide diffusion of the internet and online technologies, media convergence has been considered an overarching transition process and one of the major implications of digitization. As such, it has become a buzzword and a key issue in academic texts, policy documents and industrial papers (Diehl
Die Nutzung der Nachrichten steht im Fokus des Digital News Report des Reuters Institute for the ... more Die Nutzung der Nachrichten steht im Fokus des Digital News Report des Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Im Rahmen einer international vergleichenden Studie werden seit 2012 Daten zum Wandel der Nutzung von analogen hin zu digitalen Nachrichten gesammelt und dementsprechende Trends abgeleitet. Der Fachbereich Kommunikationswissenschaft der Universität Salzburg ist dabei der Kooperationspartner für die österreichische Teilstudie und seit 2015 Teil des Digital News Report. Kernbereiche der Studie sind: • Nachrichtennutzung über sämtliche Plattformen und Angebote<br> • Vergleich mit Entwicklungen in anderen Ländern<br> • Wandel bzw. Zusammenspiel von analogen und digitalen Nachrichten.
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Papers by Sergio Sparviero
Mobile Geräte ermöglichen eine bequeme, schnelle und personalisierte Nachrichtennutzung und stehen damit auch nur mehr knapp hinter dem Computer/Laptop bei der Nutzung als Hauptgerät. Die beliebtesten Kanäle, um digitale Nachrichten abzurufen sind dabei Websites/Apps und bei den jüngeren Altersgruppen auch Social Media; hier sind vor allem Messenger-Dienste zunehmend populär. Im Vergleich der Altersgruppen zeigen sich auch eine verstärkt traditionelle Nutzung bei den älteren Befragten und eine stärkere digitale Nutzung bei den jüngeren Befragten. Der Schnittpunkt zwischen traditionell bzw. digital liegt bei etwa 35 Jahren.
Against this background a set of key questions can be raised: What are the distinctions that are worth being looked at more closely in media and communication convergence research? In what way are services, technologies and texts being regrouped within the innovation process? How are tendencies of convergence (or de-convergence) expressed in the use of media? What are the implications of modularity and mass customization in the field of media and communications? What is the relationship between technological convergence and the organisational design? How do the users cope with the increased complexity that is characteristic of a converging (or de-converging) media landscape?"